Expert: Andrew Foley - 11/14/2006

Question
define the difference between Sola Scriptura and sola ecclesia?  

Answer
Well, if you just want a definition- "Sola Scriptura" is the Latin term meaning "Scripture Alone" which was one of the main rallying cries of the Protestant Reformation and has probably been the main (if not the only) unifying principle of Protestantism ever since. It is the belief that the Protestant Bible (which comprises the 66 books of the Jewish Old Testament canon and the 27 book New Testament universally acknowledged by the vast majority of Christians) is the inerrant word of God and is the only source of Christian doctrine and the ultimate earthly source of Christian authority. "Sola ecclesia" is more a more unfamiliar term. Obviously it means "Church Alone" but I believe it is a modern term of a polemical origin, probably directed against the Catholic Church, but in reality does not represent the actual belief of any religious body.

In any case, I think both terms are somewhat inaccurate. "Sola Scriptura" is a stirring slogan, but doesn't truly represent the Protestant position. The Reformers position is probably better represented by the slogan "Prima Scriptura"- that the Bible is our first or primary means of divine revelation, and the one by which all other sources of doctrine is to be tested, but not our only one. There is also the 2000 year tradition of the church, our reason and our own experience. It's only common sense- after all, Protestants have to acknowledge that the Bible doesn't tell us what books should be in the New Testament, nor did it fall from the sky to the foot of the cross at Golgotha. It was an extra-Biblical source, the Church, which compiled and authorized what we now know as the New Testament, yet Protestants still acknowledge that decision as divinely inspired. The source for our Biblical canon is called Sacred Tradition. Protestants frequently appeal to the antiquity of a belief for validation, and indeed, if the Early Church believed something, that's a powerful argument for its legitimacy. That is Tradition.

Also, reason is a source of doctrine. One only has to read about the development of the doctrine of the Trinity (read Jaroslav Pelikan's book on the history of Christian Tradition) to understand that certain of our doctrines are just not self-evident in the Bible and had to have been worked out by human minds over the course of centuries, without contradicting Scripture of course. The Bible tells us that Jesus called the Father greater than He and even prayed to the Father, which seems to say pretty clearly that Jesus was a separate and created being. However, the Bible also says that the Word (Jesus) was with God and the Word_was_God, which says pretty clearly that Jesus was God. So, reconciling those contrasting facts into what became the doctrine of the Trinity was the task of theologians' minds for something like 4 centuries if not more. This method also has to be acknowledged by Protestants, otherwise their Bibles wouldn't be filled with so many explanatory notes.

Some people, particularly Quakers, Pentecostals and some other sects that claim to hear direct revelation from God on a daily basis, would list experience as a means by which to know doctrine, but I would disagree, and so would a lot of Protestants. There's just no way to judge another person's subjective experience and I think that the credibility of that method falls apart by the demonstrable fact that different individuals, even in the same denomination and the same church, often hear wildly contradictory things from "God". That's not to say that God doesn't communicate with people in a personal way, but not as a way of proclaiming doctrine. So, to sum up, I think "Prima Scriptura" is a more accurate description of the Protestant view of authority, with the Bible being the main source of divine revelation but with Tradition and Reason being the two subsidiary paths. Protestants may not acknowledge the two latter methods of revelation but it must be admitted that they have played a major role in the development of Protestant theology. It would be an interesting experiment to take an educated foreigner who has never heard of Christianity and see what kind of religious system he would come up with if he were given the Bible alone to interpret. I daresay that his conception of Christianity would be unlike anything in existence.

"Sola Ecclesia" is a misrepresentation of the Catholic position. Catholics do not believe that the Church is a source of Divine revelation. We believe that we know God's revelation through both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition (that is to say, His Word in its written and oral forms). Where we would differ from Protestants though is the explicit acknowledgment of Tradition as a source of doctrine and the fact that we believe that Jesus established a visible authority on earth, the Catholic Church, to be our earthly arbiter of religious truth, much as the Supreme Court acts in our US political system. For example, the doctrines of infant baptism and Purgatory are not explicitly endorsed in Scripture (nor are they explicitly denied). However, those two doctrines have been practiced and believed by Christians since the very earliest Church, and as such, since they do not contradict Scripture, they have been held onto by Catholics through the ages. These arguments didn't just arise with Martin Luther. If you read the aforementioned Pelikan's book, you'll see that they were having these discussions in the 100s and 200s, but in that time, as opposed to the 1500s, the Church approved of them simply because Christians had_always_baptized infants and prayed for the dead, even since Apostolic times. That is an explicit recognition of the authority of Sacred Tradition. An example of a Catholic man-made tradition is priestly celibacy. That can never be a doctrine since Scripture and history tell us that was not a doctrine of the early church, although it was highly admired and frequently practiced. As for the Church's authority, we believe that neither Scripture nor Tradition can interpret themselves. There has to be some final earthly authority or we will become unmoored from the True Faith, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of doctrine arising from human trickery. The existence of 30,000 different Protestant denominations attests to the fact that Scripture Alone just does not work. We can never be our own authorities. I don't believe Jesus would leave us abandoned like that. I believe He left us His Church and I believe that, by necessity, the Holy Spirit protects it from error on doctrinal matters.

I hope I may have provided some good information. If you have any other questions you know where to find me.